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Tanks and fighter jets are becoming less relevant. The war in Ukraine underlines how drones are changing everything. They're cheaper to manufacture (or buy/retrofit) and just about everybody can make or reverse-engineer them.
The barrier to entry is so low in fact that I worry about the day when terrorist groups begin to deploy them in major cities.
The barrier to entry is so low in fact that I worry about the day when terrorist groups begin to deploy them in major cities.
We already have auto-tracking drones. They can lock onto a person and follow them around. The intended use is to allow live streamers and YouTubers to be able to stream/record video by simply sending the drone out. But if it can automatically track and follow a person, it can likely be reprogrammed to automatically home in on a person. And at that point, it’s just a matter of strapping some C4 to it. It would be the ultimate fire-and-forget weapon. Program it to ignore anyone with your military uniform (or find some other anti-tracking feature, like an IR reflector that the drone can see,) and you could surgically strike an entire neighborhood with a swarm of them.
The game changer will be swarm capable drones.
A few smart drones can be used to guide a swarm of cheaper drones on target. Additional sensor drones can feed back info to improve this.
Currently, defensive systems can cope with a drone attack. However, if you have 20 coming in from all directions, in perfect coordination, they will be overwhelmed. You don't even need all of them to be armed, just a couple, protected by the rest.
Current drone usage is akin to the first tanks in WWI. The WWII equivalent will be terrifying.
Their tracking capability sucks though, what you see in the promotional vids is now what they're capable of.
The struggle to keep up with someone lightly jogging
They don't need them.
Stop selling spare parts and they will soon be useless.
They are incredibly maintenance intense even in peace time. In wartime even more so because even minor combat damage adds up.
Iran bought 79 F-14 in 1974. Revolution and arms embargo 1979. In 1984 they had 15 airworthy planes kept in shape by taking parts from other F-14s.
They have since got some spare parts from hostage deals and the black market. Probably reverse engineering too so they have about 40 of them flyable. But the 5 first year has 80% of the fleet grounded should say something about it.
Turns out America's greateast weapoin in its fight against terrorism is the quality of its engineering.
I wouldn't expect jets from other countries to be any different. Aircraft in general get a lot of inspection and maintenance. Military jets planes push the limits of what their materials and systems can handle, and it takes a toll.
Idk how credible the site below is, but they claim the F-16 averages 15 hours of inspections ad maintenance for every hour of flight time. Also that military jets are generally only mission-ready about 50%-75% of the time, which means they spend an awful lot of their useful lives in the inspection and maintenance queues:
https://simpleflying.com/military-aircraft-maintenance/
Yeah, I was being a bit cheeky - I wouldn't step on any jet plane that hasn't had access to official spare parts for a few years.
I just found it amusing F-14s were bought in the mid-70s, which I guess is around the time many would say the quality of American cars also began dropping.
I would think that any decent military would stockpile any spare parts they would need to 2 years.
I understand if the supply stops they will eventually run out, but this is basic assurances that I'd think any military worth its salt would have in place when buying weapons.
If a country doesn't produce their own fighter jets (which only ~20 countries do) but needs to buy some, they don't have a lot of options. And while it's private companies that manufacture and sell the jets, the government of the manufacturing country isn't going to let a business sell weapons of war to just anyone. The US doesn't want to sell jets that might later get used against the US. So any weapons sales have to be approved by the US government first. Just like they don't want to sell to an enemy, they don't want the weapons they agree to sell to get stolen by an enemy. So they include technology (kill switch) than can prevent that from becoming a problem.
This sounds like unsupported nonsense to me, sorry.
No sovereign country would buy military hardware that could simply be switched off by the providing country, doing so would be tantamount to being annexed.
To me it's absurd to suggest that this type of hardware could just be switched off remotely either on the tarmac or in the air. It's an unconscionable security risk even for planes operated by the US. Imagine having this single point of failure for your entire air force.
It sounds like the on board computer communicates with a support service in the US and I have no doubt that if the relationship soured they could probably figure out how to do some nasty things through that API. However, you obviously wouldn't plug your fancy plane's computer in to your adversary's API.
That said, the providing country could certainly make things difficult for you as regards parts and support. However, it sounds like there's arrangements in place whereby all consumers of this type of equipment participate in manufacturing parts. That is to say that switzerland for example is responsible for the production of a selection of F-35 parts, as are other nations that use that plane.
The idea being that if the US withdrew support it would be a pain in the ass but not the end of the plane.
Can it not be removed? Or cracked?
Because encryption is a weapon of war (according to the US government, seriously look up why encryption tech cannot be exported even as open source to us enemies), breaking their encryption and trying to install your own software would be an act of war.
Yes. Until pretty recently Java didn't contain unlimited strength encryption algorithms by default because of this/not getting around to updating
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Java_Cryptography_Extension
I'm not gonna dig deeper, but it seems like the actual policy change was as late as 2011 based on the comment, but they didn't get around to changing it for another few years.
Once more into the breach, dear friends.
Kill switches also prevents sales of said tech. France?(?) Is rethinking their purchase of 35 f35s.
The kill switches are fine so long as the seller remains stable and predictable.
Ok. Kill switches should be in the hands of the buyers though and disabled from the seller.
Same way you can buy a car and it can be remotely disabled by the company that made the car if they want to.
Always online always connected products are never truly 100% yours to own and do with what you please.
This is why the early 2000s Honda Civic will continue to be the pinnical of cheap transportation until the end of time
I throw the Toyota Prius 2 card on the table, IT'S ON
If only it wasn't one of the most hideous vehicles ever made.
Ours has nearly 300'000 km and nearly no reparations are necessary. That's just exceptional. Extremely well designed and high quality components it seems. That's what counts for me, the looks, I couldn't care less and there is worse.
99.99% of the time I am a function over form kinda guy.
I just do not like the shape of the first couple generations of the Prius.
The newest generation I actual think looks pretty good.
I can't deny they do run basically forever. My dad got one to replace his minivan once all the kids had moved out and he is able to take him and his wife to gigs with his whole drum set comfortably in the back.
I drive his Prius occasionally for various reasons and I just don't like it each time. I find it unsatisfying to drive and unpleasant to look, but I cannot deny it's utility and reliability.
I'm pretty sure it isn't true and assume Trump misunderstood a general explaining gleefully that since the US manufacturers repair parts any country at war with America would quickly find its fleet inoperable due to the immense constant maintenance required for these planes.
But, the President claiming there is a kill switch should cause all purchasing countries to cancel their orders - if such a switch exists then there's a backdoor somewhere in the software and the US sucks balls at espionage so China knows how to trigger it.
Turns out the supply chain for such a complex machine is in itself very complex. Some components are manufactured by suppliers in various countries formerly believed to be allies. This includes stuff like the ejection seats and some electronics that are made in the UK, parts for the wing sets that are made in Italy or inserts for the weapon bays that are made in Canada. Additionally the Netherlands currently houses the supply hub for spare parts for the European countries. It is estimated that there are spare parts to keep hundreds of F-35s in the air for a while there. The most worrying aspect certainly remains the software support, without which all the precious hardware loses much of its utility, even if there isn't a master kill switch.
Especially given how bad the US is with regards to keep backdoors and their keys secret. Just look at what state hackers did with American telco equipment recently.
I don't know if it's true or not, but if someone is buying military equipment from an enemy, they already have a giant hole in their defense.
With all the software, GPS, and network capability of modern equipment, there's no way of knowing what kind of secret backdoors were put into it. Especially if the maker KNEW they were selling it to an enemy. Why not put GPS trackers or a kill switch in that only you can access?
Of course, maybe both parties were allies when the purchase was made, so they weren't too worried about it, but a lot of those alliances are being tested right now, and I do fear that the US will NOT be supporting the good guys this time around.
The few things I could understand about that.
Modern fighter jet have a huge software part. Remember the Top-Gun film where the F-14 needed an officer on the backseat to monitor radar, position, identify target and tons of stuff I have no idea about ? In machine like the F-35 it's replaced by a computer. Like any other software it's relatively easy to implement some permission to use-it.
Modern fighter are pretty complex piece of hardware, and you can't just have a good mechanic reproducing a part with their own tools and need a whole supply chain running
It's not even that new nor American only. Remember the Falkland war ? Airbus sent some french engineer to help Argentinian operating the Exocet missile because sinking a British warship is good for marketing and once done, the French gov told their British allies where the missile batteries were located (because their allies after all). Except that with modern technology, you can do both without having to have a defence industry engineer travelling. And realistically, any country exporting weapon would have way to make sure the weapon won't be used against them (while not limiting too much their usage to not fuck their marketing)
I am very sure that it is true.
Not only such primitve things as a kill switch - because nobody can make any profit directly from deactivating a device - but also lots of dependencies from the manufacturers and from the Usa, for the supply of ammunition, materials, spare parts etc. The same idea that we know as "vendor lock-in" in lots of consumer products.
I'm not so sure. From a software perspective adding a kill switch is needlessly adding a potential vulnerability. Given that (as many others have said) the planes will need spare parts and software updates anyways I see it as quite unlikely that there would be an kill switch.
From a software perspective adding a kill switch is needlessly adding a potential vulnerability.
Of course they would test against all imaginable vulnerabilities. It is a weapon after all.
And of course they would make all the needed software tests in a safe environment where the switch doesn't really destroy things.
need spare parts and software updates
As I said, no direct profit from the kill switch. But the possibility of indirect profit: for every destroyed weapon, you cannot sell spare parts anymore, but then there is the potential to sell a new weapon later.
It's only a hole in your defense if you need to defend against the country that sold you the hardware. Ideally, you try and stay friends with them.
Or you could just get your engineers to remove the kill switch. 🤷🏻♂️
"kill switches" don't make any sense. Nobody would buy weapons knowing they had one, so you could only use it once before your export market tanks.
And why on Earth would you program weapons that deactivate upon receiving a signal? Obviously this would suck if our adversaries (who are all technically sophisticated) learned how to alt-ctrl-del our allies' equipment.
The counter to that is why would you let anyone have a weapon they could use on you. There is no particular reason it had to be the US that turns, it could be anyone.
Because they're paying you money for it?
If you don't sell your planes to them they will just buy from someone else. They will still have planes to potentially use against you.
You may as well sell weapons to your allies because the chances they will turn them on you is minimal, and you want money.
Any time you give a weapon to somebody, there is at least one of these two things happening if not both;
You are sure this person is your friend and ally and is therefore no threat to you;
You have a better weapon/the full capability to defend against the shared weapon without fear upon sharing it, thus ensuring your superiority in any potential engagement with what was formerly yours.
In this case, both of these were/are true. Quite simply, the US fleet will remain functional in greater numbers for longer even if it is no longer a reliable ally of global freedom, and the pilots have had far more experience in the cockpit of fully functional vehicles to boot. So even in an engagement where the technology is a literal 1:1 match, pilot skill and experience will absolutely make the difference and the US military knows that.
Selling weapons to people is fine if you're military is 10x the size of all of theirs combined.
We "can" attack the US, but not a fuck are we ever going to.
The US does not like losing soldiers. It happens, but we hate it. Even if we would win the war, losing a few thousand soldiers would be something we don't like.
This is something most functional democracies share.
It's entirely possible that the F-35 or F-22 has something like that. Even if it doesn't, it's definitely expecting regular software updates which it wouldn't be getting.
The older jets, like the F-16s they've given to Ukraine, I highly doubt have any kind of kill switch.
I don't think they do. No military would buy such things. The way they prevent their own weapons being used against them is buy making the export models inferior to that of their own. Same applies to Abrams tanks too.
My thoughts exactly, I can't imagine a military paying 100 million per F35, that somebody can just turn off remotely, leaving them dead in the water.
You cannot fight US with them
Or Israel. (Turkey apparently replaced the original avionics of their US jets so that they could hypothetically target Israeli fighters.)